Amerikan Uutiset - Uutisarkisto

touko 2, 2012

The Finnish American Rest Home, Inc. held its Semi-Annual meeting at Annan Maja

The Finnish-American Rest Home of Lake Worth held their members official semi-annual meeting at Annan Maja on Saturday the 28th of April. The agenda heard in the meeting was pertaining to normal semiannual reports. The chairman of the meeting was Sylvia Skillin. All together, 67 members attended the meeting.

The meeting started with a presentation by member of the board Tapio Salin, who showed two studies done to two buildings in the area. In 2009, the architect office of Salz-Michelsen made a study of the Rest Home buildings and their condition. For example, the now empty Alarik House, which has been proposed to be remodeled as the new site for an Alzheimer’s unit, is a pre-manufactured type of building usually used as a storage building. The renovation of this building as a care unit is not financially profitable. For nursing and functional logistics, all care units should be located in the same building.

An ex-inspector for the Agency for Health Care Administration, Skip Gregory, surveyed the Rest Home’s buildings in March. In his report he concluded that renovating the Medicaid covered Nursing Home is not feasible due to many technical inadequacies of the current type of construction. The Nursing Home’s room layouts which were built in the 1970’s do not fill today’s requirements either.

The CEO of the FARH,Inc., Hanna McColough, concluded in her report that the Nursing Home is already losing the competition to other facilities in the area because of a lack of private rooms. The Rest Home Manager, Pirjo-Leena Koskinen said, that even though the service of the facility is first class, the Rest Home loses to other more modern facilities in the area in all around comparisons due to the age of the facility’s buildings. Reporting on the financial situation, Bea Haapanen said, that from an economic point of view, it would be most important to start the construction of the new nursing home and the proposed Alzheimer’s unit as soon as possible.

The meeting saw three issues brought to a vote. All three votes taken were about members who were expelled from the board, who wanted to be reinstated. All three requests were denied by the member´s votes.

The meeting concluded with coffee and Finnish pulla-pastries made by the kitchen staff of the Rest Home.